Stop Seeking Approval

Has 'people pleasing' taken over your life?

Needing and seeking approval from the other people in your life is not, in itself, a pathological characteristic. Quite the opposite. It's a survival mechanism. You are evolutionarily 'programmed' to find ways to fit in, be accepted, develop social bonds and draw esteem through your relationships with others. Why is this? Because your life depends on it.

In the dim and distant history of our very early ancestors, you hadn't a hope on your own. If the clan or tribe you belonged to took against you and cast you out, you would pretty shortly die. So being on good terms with a network of people was a truly vital survival strategy. The overwhelming negative emotional response we feel to any kind of social rejection is testimony to just how critical our drive for approval is.

Do we still need the approval of others in the modern world?

It might be argued that, in modern society, we are not so fundamentally dependent on each other, especially the people close to us. But evolutionary change is far slower than social change, and that drive is still fundamental to the survival of an infant, for instance. Not being accepted by your parents or carers is still very much a death sentence. So the need for approval is not going to go away by itself any time soon.

What has changed in recent human history is the extent to which we can, through our own actions and understanding, modify how we respond to our primal drives. Having a powerful instinctive drive is not the same thing as acting on it. But it can feel quite challenging to bring an instinct under conscious control. It feels all wrong, and as if there will be terrible consequences (that's evolution working on you).

But it can be done.

You can get control of excessive approval seeking with hypnosis

Stop seeking approval is an audio hypnosis session designed by psychologists that will help you update your instinctive responses to match your present circumstances. This doesn't mean that you will lose all interest in the endorsement or appreciation of others. It means that you will be able to choose what importance to give to it, rather than automatically putting it first.